DailyLit.com

I recently discovered Dailylit.com, which would seem to be the ultimate triumph of the Internet over classic literature. It will send you moderate-sized portions of a book on a daily basis through email or RSS, so that you can read your Dickens or Hemingway without suffering the embarrassment of being seen with an actual (gasp!) tome in your hands. There are numerous classics available for free, and newer titles for the usual price of an ebook (though I’m not sure why you’d pay $5 for a book that will end up being scattered through your inbox in 100 installments).

Needless to say, I wasn’t sure how useful I would find the service, especially since I've never been able to get in the right frame of mind to read an ebook. When I’ve tried reading classics from Gutenberg.org, I generally find such a large block of text overwhelming, and give up after a few pages. Curious whether this “daily” format might help, I chose a classic (Pride and Prejudice, which I’ve always put off reading as a “girl’s book,” but recently very much enjoyed as a film) and set it to send the shortest amount possible per day, about half a chapter per email. At that rate, I’d finish Jane Austen’s classic in just 146 days! Heh.

It turns out, I’ve found that not only am I quite able to enjoy reading a novel in this form (at least one so well written as this), but that even after changing the settings to send three times as much text per day, I soon found myself repeatedly clicking the little link at the bottom of each email “to receive the next installment immediately.” For some reason, by breaking it up into manageable chunks, it’s easier to maintain my attention, even if I end up reading several portions in one sitting. In fact, I’ve read three-quarters of the book in the last 4 days, all in chapter and a half increments. I’m hooked.

So I guess that’s proof of my slavery to the Internet Age, but I can’t help but recommend the service, which provides a variety of options for how much and how often you want them to send portions of the book. My only complaints are that occasionally a paragraph break appears in the wrong place (not sure why) and it can feel a little unsettling to begin the next installment without having the previous one right in front of you. It sometimes takes a bit to remember what was happening (or even going back to the previous email for a reminder), especially when the previous day’s email ended in the middle of a chapter. Still, for a free service DailyLit is well worth checking out.